Pentecost Sunday

Hello everyone. I hope you were inspired and challenged yesterday. I know I was. The thought might have been new for many of you. Nonetheless, it is an important one to grasp. I stated yesterday, to the best of my ability, that Pentecost Sunday is part of a much larger story—the story of a missionary God. He is a fountain of sending love. This belief reveals some of the more fundamental aspects of our faith. Why is there creation? Why Israel? Why Jesus? Why the church? Because God wants to share his light and love. God has a centrifugal force (a movement away from center) as well as a centripetal force (movement toward center). Through his Spirit, God is reaching out and drawing all of creation back into his liberating light and love. God through the ascended Christ sends his Spirit . . . to send (form and empower) the church to witness to God’s grace and truth. I like the way David Bosch states it in his classic book, Transforming Mission: “In the new image mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. ‘It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church’ (Moltmann 1977:64). Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love” (391, emphasis mine). I would encourage you to read that one more time, slowly. You see, the church doesn’t create a mission per se; its reason to be is mission. To be a church is to be sent out into God's creation. Likewise, to be a Spirit-filled disciple is to be sent. We're a part of God's dream to bring healing and restoration to the world.

But what does this mean? Does this mean we’re all called to be evangelists? Does this mean we have fight for our rights or for our country? Does this mean we have to start knocking on doors? Does this mean we need to leave for another country in order to be a missionary? No, it doesn't mean any of those things. It's deeper and more dynamic than anything those questions represent. We are to be witnesses to God’s salvation in Christ (Acts 1.8), not just do some witnessing whenever we feel the desire to prove something. And for Luke, salvation is multifaceted. Quoting Bosch again: “One could say that, for Luke, salvation actually has six dimensions: economic, social, political, physical, psychological, and spiritual” (117). To witness to such a dynamic salvation will require the entire community moving outward toward the world, responding to the Spirit’s direction and empowering presence, loving the world with words and deeds. In other words, we need to be shaped and fashioned by God’s movement of love so that we can actually embody the good news. What a great adventure! No doubt, we’re not up the task on our own. We need the empowering presence of the Christ. And so maybe we need to wait like the early disciples (cf. Luke 24.36-53), seeking God's transforming grace so that our hearts will be stretched and enlarged to make room for the new life in Christ. Peace!